Monthly Archives: February 2005

my turf

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Elaine Sciolino has crossed the line.  Her article in this Sunday’s Times is about the Rue des Martyrs in the Ninth Arrondissement.  That’s my neighborhood! That’s where I go for the bank, the dry cleaners, the newspapers, the cheese, the everything.  It is also a very trendy street on which you can also find the quirky antiques, the art galleries, the hipster cafes and restaurants, the La Perla lingerie, the gorgeous lamps, and the coolest boutiques. Apparently the part I live on, in the Ninth, is "bourgeois" (ok, I’ll accept that) and the part of the street above Blvd Clichy in the Eighteenth is "bohemian." So all those "bobos" we hear so much about must actually live right there on the border on Blvd Clichy…?

Anyway, do read the article.  It’s satisfying to find one’s neighborhood is a "hot spot" when one moved there with no pretense to hipness.  If the New York Times and its readers are on their way here, at least I’ll look like a local, dragging my drycleaning up the hill with a baguette tucked under my arm, my pint-sized dog straining ahead of me on his leash.

More on the London trip shortly.

grumble

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Hi. I’m in London.  Sitting at a compuer at an easyinternet cafe on Oxford Street, the heady stench of yeast from the downstairs Subway making my stomach turn.  I’ve been informed I need to rewrite the article I filed on Tueday. So I sit and wait for the editor to send me the file.

I am in exile.  People are speaking English but it’s not my English.  I miss hearing the sound of French everywhere.  I long to purse my lips and shrug my shoulders and say "bah ouay, euhhhhhh" while shaking my head at someone.

The weather here is wet wet wet.  The damp gets into my joints and makes my hips and knees ache.  I’m too young to have achy hips.

Well. Nothing to see here.  Move along.

to london, to london (again)

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Yes, again.  For the third time in eight months, I’m going to London.  Enough already! There are many things to dislike about London, and I see them in bas relief when I go to London from Paris.  Somehow the comparison of the two cities seems unfair, but it’s inevitable when you go from one to the other. 

But, my wonderful and loving mother who I miss every day is coming to London, so I must hence dispatch.  She is accompanied her wonderful and loving best friend Gayle.  I am going to meet up with my wonderful and loving best friend Emily.  All told, I have a huge love fest in store.  Which I must say, I’ve been in sad need of…  in case you couldn’t tell from the array of pissed-off/angry/wistful music on my playlists, long distance to Portland didn’t work out, and so I’m currently in a weird limbo-place where my head is saying "move on" but the old ticker is still hopeful that things will work out with the schmuck when portland is no longer in the picture.  On ne badine pas avec l’amour, tu vois.

But, barely two weeks after the last relationship "ended" (first sign of denial: quotation marks around the concept of a finale) I’m seeing someone new, I’ve started reporting for JTA again, and I’m back to being a *jetsetter*.  Things are looking up. 

I’ve a lovely view as I write this–  it’s snowing in Paris, great big white flakes.  Seen through my wrought-iron window box against the biscuit-colored stucco of the building next door, it’s so Caillebotte.  Why must I thither to London?

the worst DJ in France

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this week, a DJ on NRJ Radio here in France made a gaffe so ridiculous I’m surprised I can’t find it noted anywhere else in cyberspace.  This unfortunate DJ wanted to tell his listeners about a benefit concert featuring well-known French recording artists including Patrick Bruel, Johnny Hallyday, Charles Aznavour, and Patricia Kaas.  The concert, our DJ informed us, is being held to benefit the victims of the tiramisu in Southeast Asia.

che bella!

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bella, originally uploaded by maitresse.

A while ago I mentioned my cousin Nicole was pregnant… well, she had the baby back in December 2004 and lookwhat a cute little melon she came up with! everyone say hi to baby Isabella!

semi-colon disclaimer

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I was just looking over the post I wrote this morning about Karo and I realized that in a couple of places I had mistyped a semi-colon instead of a comma. Now, one of my primary joys in my writing is finding exactly the right punctuation at exactly the right moment. Flaubert had his mot juste– I have my ponctuation juste. (And no, I don’t own a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves).

But I am currently typing on my French roommate’s computer, and FOR YOUR INFORMATION, the semi-colon is located where the comma is on an American keyboard. The COMMA is located on a french keyboard where the letter M is on the American keyboard. And there are a million other inconsistencies which explain the occasion spelling innovations in my postings since I moved in with Annabelle.

So I have gone back and corrected the semicolons, because I take great pride in knowing when to use one. There is no excuse, however, for my spelling, which used to be bee-worthy but now is just blameworthy.

Whatever

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Why I subscribe to Aaron Karo’s newsletter, "Ruminations" is beyond me.  Perhaps I like the nearly apoplectic feelings of anger it arouses in my heart.  Now, as a disclaimer– I don’t have a problem with Karo himself.  He seems like a reasonably nice guy, and he is funny on occasion.  In fact, in that fun Jewish Geography way, a couple of my friends went to high school with him (POBJFKHS, baby).  But what really pisses me off about him is something I’m going to call the Karo Ethic.

In addition to the newsletter, which appears in my box at random moments (once a month? feels like more than that), Karo has written several books about college and twentysomething life.  God bless.  I wish I had that kind of diligence.  Basically, he’s a guy from Long Island who went away to college (U. Penn) and started sending out group emails full of Seinfeld-esque observations on the nature of the college experience.  Pretty soon, everyone thought he was really funny, and he amassed a following at colleges across the country.  That translated into book #1, Ruminations on College Life.

Then Karo graduated and moved to a cookie cutter apartment in Manhattan.  He kept ruminating, and that turned into Book #2, Ruminations on Twentysomething Life (due out in May 2005).

Now, he has just informed us, his loyal subscribers, that Twentieth Century Fox has signed him on to write a sitcom based on his column called "The Whatever Years."  He breaks the news in typical Karo style:

‘"The Whatever Years" features some of your favorite characters from my RUMINATIONS column – me, my roommate Brian, and our friends the Triplets – and details our exploits as recovering frat boys running wild through New York City. And if even one of the Triplets gets a hand job for having a sitcom character based upon him, it will make the whole experience worthwhile.’

Now that is pure class. 

But I haven’t yet said why I’m so infuriated by Karo.  Here it comes: it’s his tag line,  "Writing what you’re thinking since 1997." I resent the fact that as a white, upper-middle-class, Ivy League-educated Jew from Long Island, Karo assumes he is speaking for me.  But I get really mad when I think that Karo presumes to speak on behalf of ALL twenty-somethings living on their own in the big city.  I resent the fact that my generation has been assigned Karo as our spokesperson.  I resent the fact that the popularity of Karo establishes an official mainstream voice and set of experiences and reactions to the world, which relegates any competing narratives to the margins.  I resent the fact that Karo legitimizes a set of male sexual ethics that forces girls to adhere to a new version of the Madonna/Whore archetype.  Either these girls become sanctified "girlfriends" (on the road to cookie cutter matrimony) or they are just girls to fuck around with, nameless, unidentified, synecdochical (who do you think is giving that Triplet that hand job?).   

Finally, Karo represents a value system that paradoxically values a person’s level of education (where you went to school, what kind of graduate degree you have) while disdaining any serious intellectual engagement.  The degree flaunted from the prestigious college becomes more a way of saying "look at what an amazing school I went to and look at how little I learned while I was there."  In this Karo universe, ignorance becomes a badge of honor. 

By the way– he notes on his website that his column became required reading in a college course in Austria.  Dude, did you ever think maybe the professor is so appalled by the current state of American campus life that s/he’s using you as an example of the Decline of the American Mind?

And most egregiously– Karo claims to have invented the slang term "fuck me."  Actually, the first time I remember hearing this phrase was in "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves" (1991).  The line is uttered by Will Scarlett (Christian Slater), upon seeing that one of the other characters (Azeem? Robin?) has managed to catapault himself over the castle walls: "Fuck me, he cleared it."

Post Your Library Week!

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Over in Flash!topia, it’s Post Your Library Week! So– in solidarity, I share with you an edited list of my library.  My real library, currently housed in the Archives in Commack, NY (private collection), comprises thousands of books. I’m not joking. I think it’s actually the largest library in Commack. Too bad I don’t get state funding for it (I guess I’d have to lend books out to people for that to happen).  No– what you see here is the sadly limited Paris branch.  Hey Flash!topian, are we including cookbooks and guidebooks and picture books and the like?

Anthologie de la poesie francaise (XXe siecle)
Aragon, Louis.  Anicet.
—-.  Libertinage.
—-. Le Paysan de Paris.
—–. Les cloches de bale.
Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood.
—-. Smoke and Other Short Stories.
Barthes, Roland.  S/Z.
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations.
—-. Reflections.
Bouchardeau, Huguette. Elsa Triolet.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Les regles d’art.
Breton, Andre.  Nadja.
—-.  L’amour fou.
—-. Entretiens.
Cahun, Claude. Ecrits.
Carter, Angela. Wise Children.
Crouzet-Pavan, Elisabeth.  Venise triomphante: les horizons d’un mythe.
Cusset, Francois. French Theory.
Duras, Marguerite. Le ravissement de Lol. V. Stein
—-, avec Xaviere Gauthier. Les parleuses.
Eagleton, Terry. After Theory.
—–. Literary Theory.
Ernaux, Annie.  Passion Simple.
—–. Journal du dehors.
—–. Se perdre.
Foucault, Michel.  Histoire de la sexualite 1: la volonté de savoir
Freud, Sigmund, and Joseph Breuer.  Studies in Hysteria.
—-. Dora: Studies in a Case of Hysteria.
Gavalda, Anna. Je veux que quelqu’un m’attend quelque part.
—–. Je l’aimais.
Genette, Gerard. Palimpsestes.
Girard, Rene. Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque.
Kauffmann, Jean-Paul.  The Angel on the Left Bank.
Kristeva, Julia. Le genie feminin: Hannah Arendt.
—-. Le genie feminin: Melanie Klein.
—-. Le genie feminin: Colette.
Latham, Sean. Am I a Snob? Modernism and the Novel.
Lautreamont, Comte de. Les Chants de Maldoror.
Lecourt, Dominique.  The Mediocracy.
Levinas, Emmanuel.  Nine Talmudic Readings.
—–. De Dieu qui vient l’idée
Mace, Gerard.  Ex libris.
Maupassant, Guy de. Le Horla.
Miller, Tyrus.  Late Modernism.
Murger, Henry.  Scenes de la vie de boheme.
Richter, David. Falling into Theory.
Roth, Philip.  The Plot Against America.
—-.  The Ghost Writer.
Sarraute, Nathalie.  L’usage de la parole.
Singer, I.B. The Slave.
Sollers, Philippe.  Dictionnaire amoureuse de Venise.
Tadie, Jean-Yves. Le critique litteraire au XXe siecle.
Triolet, Elsa.  Le premier accros coute deux cents francs.
Weill, Nicholas.  La Republique et les Antisémites
Wells, H.G. Tono-Bungay.
Wilson, Jean Moorcroft.  Virginia Woolf and Anti-Semitism.
Wood, James. The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel.
Woolf, Virginia.  Three Guineas.

 

 
 
 
 
   
 
                      
 
 

V-Day in Paris

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This is your on-the-ground Paris correspondent, on the trail of the hottest story this chilly February afternoon: Valentine’s Day in Paris.

Oh, you’re so fucking romantic, all you tourists with your big grins and your heads craned up over the buildings looking for a sight of the Eiffel Tower.  You’re so original, strolling hand in hand in the Luxembourg Gardens.

You’ll have to excuse me.  I’m seated in a cafe near the Pantheon, having a coffee and a quickie internet fix in between class at the Sorbonne and a research trip to the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve.  The tables at Le Cercle are really close together, and my table for two (me and my laptop) is sandwiched in between two hetero couples, Swedes on my left and Germans on my right.  Currently, both women have their arms suspended staight as ramrods over the table, their hands trapped in the mouths of their gallant escorts.  I suppose to them it’s romantic, but in stereo it’s odd.

Yes, I’ve been there, I too have had my hand crushed to the mouth of some admirer two feet and a table away from me.  Usually it’s over dinner, though, in the corner of a dark restaurant.  But hello, people– it’s the middle of the day, and you have company.  What’s more, you have another couple doing exactly the same thing seated a table away from you.  don’t you have anything invested in the unique quality of your love? must you all behave in exactly the same cliched fashion? This is not the time or the place, in spite of what you may think about Paris. 

It’s as if couples arrive here and they feel all of a sudden compelled to hold hands and make out in public.  As if they’ve entered some magic land where people around you either can’t see your tonsil-to-tonsil combat or lack that public decency standard that qualifies that as unacceptable behavior.

Anyway.  I’m done.  Happy freaking Valentine’s Day to you and yours.

new features

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You may have noticed that I’ve added a section to the sidebar featuring my iPod playlists. This is a really interesting component of the blog, I think– for a few reasons.

First of all, the iPod playlist is an art unto itself. It is the heir to the mix tape, a new form of self-expression and creativity that feels at the same time necessary and desperately cheesy. If you head over to the iTunes Music Store, you’ll find there’s a whole section called iMix, which is similar to the lists that Amazon.com users compile of their favorite books organized around a central theme. iTunes users organize their iMixes around themes– like love, long distance relationships, breakups, etc. Or there are intrepid souls who track down all the music ever featured on “Sex and the City” so you can buy the COMPLETE soundtrack rather than the one put together by the show’s producers. Or you can browse through the celebrity playlists– my personal favorite– to find out who, for example, Rufus Wainwright listens to.

The neat thing about iTunes is that all the songs are 99 cents– which turns these songs into little pieces of candy. You can trick-or-treat your way around the site, buying a song here and a song there for the price of a venti latte. it’s very satisfying from a consumer’s point of view to be able to buy JUST the “shut up” song from the black eyed peas’ album.

But back to my iPod playlists. At the core of this blogging thing is, I would argue, essentially simple narcissism. I find my thoughts so enchanting that I’ve consecrated a website to them. Other people occasionally find them interesting as well, or at least are interested in hearing what I think about things, or what I’m up to in France. So having a list of songs I’m currently listening to will have different effects on the various readers who visit this site. Those of you who, like my mom, just want to see how I am and what I’m up to, will be able to surmise from my playlist a sense of my general mood. Those of you who read this because you think we might share the same aesthetics might come away with a music recommendation.

But here’s the deep dark secret about me that only my iPod playlists will betray: when it comes to music, I have a shameful lack of discriminatory standards. This may make me uncool in a world where we are often judged by our musical preferences. But I never had any pretenses to being cool (no die-hard musical theatre fan can). Look at the February list that I just posted. I wear my PJ Harvey badge with pride. She’s “legit,” right? Maybe a little angry grrrrl but still legit. But look– I also have Sarah McLachlan on there. Any ounce of cool I might have accrued with PJ just melted away. But wait, I protest. The Sarah song is from “Solace,” an album from the early 90s, before she becamle synonymous with sappy chick music. Alright, you say, but what’s up with the Fiona Crapple? To that I make no excuses but offer you my Rage Against the Machine.